Bacons End: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Far less than you likely are, provided it hasn't been started. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first thing everyone around Bacons End asks, and the truthful answer is usually no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank harms nothing until it is drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. Keep it like that: leave your motor off then call Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page explains what petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route through a motor. It protects first, and only then does it burn. Very fine clearances go into your injectors and the high-pressure pump, and only your diesel running through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
Of those two jobs, petrol manages the first badly and the second not at all. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips away the protection the fuel system depends on, and any pump running on that mix is wearing itself.
Taken together, they make clear the shape the problem has. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the injectors further on.
Bacons End, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Filled up, not once started. The best case there is. At a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still limited to the tank — because everywhere else your car was driven to get to it. The job is emptying and flushing on the spot.
The ignition turned on, or a short start. With the system primed, your lines and filter already hold petrol that came from that tank. Usually nothing more than clearing, cleaning and sorting the filter, so still easy.
Those few miles driven were your pump working on fuel diluted by petrol the whole way. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way the work runs to that tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. On the school run to St Anne's Catholic Primary School, the mileage is short. Very different again: a run to Birmingham, under 10 miles away, or any distance on the M6, under a mile from Bacons End, where the motor never stopped labouring hard.
Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Stapleton Drive, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the car where it is. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that deals with it, with permanent damage very uncommon if a car is stopped quickly.
Myths Bacons End people hear about petrol in a diesel
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing is removed when you top up — your tank just carries more of the same mixture. The idea behind the guidance — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that's how a modern diesel handles its fuel, and so the lubrication counts more, not less.
This is the one that catches drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel usually stops, since it will not run, and the harm stops there. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile the pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct problem. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and that petrol is still in that tank later on.
Once the motor has been run, part of the petrol sits in the fuel filter and the fuel lines, not the tank — and your next start sends it right back through the pump. So the myth "drain that tank yourself and you are sorted" doesn't hold. It's also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the slip runs one way.
When routine and your car stop matching, it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. Two cars on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. Rushing for a train outside Marston Green and fuelling up en route. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Renault Clio in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand just does what it has always done.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Bacons End
- Read the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Many motors state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check it on your first fill in a car you don't know.
- Label the key. In a home with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you lift the nozzle — every time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Tuck your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you're thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop there and then. A weaker blend results from less petrol inside the tank, but the next stage stays the same: do not crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel in Bacons End? Start here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't switch the ignition on, and don't crank it. Ask the staff to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that is BP or anywhere else. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the approximate amount, and if it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different fault — Bacons End has a page all for it.
Why one petrol in a diesel task in Bacons End costs more than another
Four different jobs sit behind the four situations above — which is why there is no honest single price. What moves the cost is chiefly which of them you are in. The proportion matters next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, and then the location of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for a van.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three queries: the fuel that went in, its volume, and whether it has run. That's why. A range turns into a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Bacons End and where it is
Bacons End is a locality situated on the riverside in the West Midlands, with an elevation of 89 metres and a mix of terraced housing. Bacons End lies approximately 6.7 miles from Birmingham and 96.4 miles from London, making it a commuter-friendly location. Bacons End is surrounded by nearby places such as Fordbridge, Chelmsley Wood, and Kingshurst, and has a population of around 3125 residents.
Fuel drain cover across West Midlands, Bacons End included
Bacons End sits in the B postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places around it as well — Fordbridge, Chelmsley Wood and Kingshurst among them. The car doesn't need to move to us: we drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Still at the pump around Bacons End?
Then you're in the best spot there is. Keep it off. Ring.